Choosing Debian over Ubuntu avoids the additional bloat that Ubuntu has over Debian, and frees Valve from having to work with Canonical. I have a lot of respect for what Canonical's done to make Linux viable as a desktop OS, but Valve needs the freedom to unhitch its wagon from a for-profit company like Canonical when their goals don't coincide. No need for Unity in Steam OS, and Valve may see a future need to choose Wayland over Mir as the future display server.

Please, do not use Valve's choosing of Debian over Ubuntu to show your hatred towards Canonical.

"Choosing Debian over Ubuntu avoids the additional bloat that Ubuntu has over Debian, and frees Valve from having to work with Canonical. I have a lot of respect for what Canonical's done to make Linux viable as a desktop OS, but Valve needs the freedom to unhitch its wagon from a for-profit company like Canonical when their goals don't coincide. No need for Unity in Steam OS, and Valve may see a future need to choose Wayland over Mir as the future display server.

Please, do not use Valve's choosing of Debian over Ubuntu to show your hatred towards Canonical. "
Hatred towards Canonical? Please read the comment before criticizing! I happen to use both Ubuntu and Debian, and I love both distros for different applications. Debian is a leaner distro that can be tweaked to run well on my older PC's, while Ubuntu is a good out-of-the-box experience that needs very little tweaking as long as the PC is fairly recent.

Steam OS seems to be aiming for a "best of both worlds" approach. Valve wants Debian's performance and the freedom that comes from using a community-based distro, but they want to tweak it so it's easy to install and configure like Ubuntu.

Valve and Canonical are both great companies that have served the Linux community well. That doesn't mean they'll agree on every technical issue like desktop environments or display servers, because their target audiences are often different.

"[q]Choosing Debian over Ubuntu avoids the additional bloat that Ubuntu has over Debian, and frees Valve from having to work with Canonical. I have a lot of respect for what Canonical's done to make Linux viable as a desktop OS, but Valve needs the freedom to unhitch its wagon from a for-profit company like Canonical when their goals don't coincide. No need for Unity in Steam OS, and Valve may see a future need to choose Wayland over Mir as the future display server.

Please, do not use Valve's choosing of Debian over Ubuntu to show your hatred towards Canonical. "
Hatred towards Canonical? Please read the comment before criticizing! I happen to use both Ubuntu and Debian, and I love both distros for different applications. Debian is a leaner distro that can be tweaked to run well on my older PC's, while Ubuntu is a good out-of-the-box experience that needs very little tweaking as long as the PC is fairly recent.

Steam OS seems to be aiming for a "best of both worlds" approach. Valve wants Debian's performance and the freedom that comes from using a community-based distro, but they want to tweak it so it's easy to install and configure like Ubuntu.

Valve and Canonical are both great companies that have served the Linux community well. That doesn't mean they'll agree on every technical issue like desktop environments or display servers, because their target audiences are often different. [/q]

I apologized for having use the term "hatred" against you. Sorry. I just want to make a point that we should not used Valve's decision of choosing Debian over Ubuntu as a vehicle to criticize Canonical. Ubuntu is open source, and even it has a Ubuntu JEOS (Just Enough Operating System) version. So the point is moot about bloats. I don't believe that Ubuntu is bloated, on the other hand, I believe KDE based desktops are more bloated than Ubuntu with Unity, this according to my testing.

Regarding no need Unity for SteamOS, that's irrelevant, I am more in favor of NO GNOME Shell for SteamOS, but the point of Valve is SteamOS is open, so no one would stop building a GNOME based SteamOS or a Unity one. If MIR would happen to be successful ( which is very likely IF their mobile push is a success) then it would be an easy part for Valve to choose MIR over the competition. There is no technical barrier for doing so. Where the market is leading, manufacturers will just follow.